That`s what I`ve been wondering for a long time too. Why aren`t Ryu ga Gotoku/Yakuza games reviewed here on RPGfan? Going by what is generally considered an RPG these days, Yakuza is much more of an RPG than a good deal of games that have reviews here.

Personally, after I`d become acquainted with Yakuza and Monster Hunter franchises, both of which I now consider to be the true evolution of the JRPG gameplay formula, it`s become increasingly harder for me to return to other JRPGs.

I bought this game expecting a Japanese Grand Theft Auto. The game only looks like an open world GTA game; I found the first few hours to be quite linear, and full of tutorials for the various systems. I agree that it is more of an RPG than anything, but it looks so much like GTA people probably assume otherwise.. I know I did.

What is the big deal with companies marketing their game a certain way? Marketing is always a ploy to trick people into buying something, why treat it as fact? I'd think the game would sell better as a GTA clone than an RPG. I'm glad it turned out to be what it is.

The more you get into the game the better it gets. There's so much to do, the story is interesting and the main characters are great. It completely exceeded my expectations. There are so many mini-games and sidequests. You can manage a hostess club which includes recruting girls, dressing them and training them. You can be a client at other clubs and develop your relationships with their hostesses (think persona social links).You can participate in fighting tournaments, be a trainer at a dojo, go to the casino play all kinds of games, karaoke, table tennis, play videogames at the arcade, I'm starting to wonder what you CAN'T do in this game.The story is dark, extremely violent and the characters you control are way older than your average protagonists and have been to hell and back. It's way more mature and darker than the GTA storylines though you can expect the typical moments of japanese humor.

You get into fights as you roam the streets to get experience and level up, unlock abilities, collect items to create new weapons and equipment, everything you expect from an rpg but in a setting that is completely different from everything else out there.You feel that the city is alive, much more than in any other game because you can enter a lot of buildings and talk to a lot of the NPCs that roam the streets. The city has several layers, sewers/undergound parking lots, the streets and the rooftops.If you become a regular at certain places you get special treatment. You might make friends on the streets and they'll help you if you get into a fight nearby.

The game comes loaded with videos explaining what happened in the previous games so don't be afraid to jump into this story, 3 out of the 4 main characters are new anyway.

I can't recommend this enough, people should stop crying for shen mue 3 and realize that sega is giving them something much, much better.

The amount of attention that went into the mini-games, especially considering there's o many of them, boggles the mind. The pool game really is a fully fledged pool game with everything you could possibly ask for and excelent presentation. It's tucked away in the corner of a bar in an underground mall and you might even complete the game without ever knowing it's there.

Yesterday I was doing a quest and I bump into a couple of guys and they're like "hey man, we're going on a group date and we're one guy short, wanna join?" I say hells yeah and one of them says "the objective is to get a particular girl in the group to like me, you gotta help me out" and I say OK.The twist is that during the date, the dialogue choices you get also allow you to hit on the girl instead of doing what you were asked, which completely changes the outcome of this event.

This is just to give you an idea of how alive this city feels.

One more thing, you probably wont find 4 great rpg protagonists in all jrpgs released this generation, well here you have 4 in a single game.

I managed to get this for $20 because GameStop don't know the difference between 3 and 4 when tagging games. :P The glowing praise above has me quite hyped.

That's one hell of a deal!Be sure to watch the videos that explain the events of the previous games before you start, they are really helpful in getting up to speed with the story. Fortunately this game introduces new characters so it isn't heavily dependant on the previous games but it's still necessary since the protagonist of the previous games is also playable and relevant to the story.

Be sure to post impressions when you start. Take your time to check out the town.